Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
January 21, 2007

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 2, Number 32 — Sunday, January 21, 2007

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Beware of the Fake News Story Emails
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   Windows Defender Problem
   4.   CounterSpy versus "something else"
   5.   Sound Card Toolbar Problems
   6.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   7.   Print Problems from Web Browser
   8.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

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1.  Beware of the Fake News Story Emails

A couple weeks ago in my email issue, I commented about some hoaxes that were circulating by email. This week, though, things turned serious.

Email users in the European Union were surprised and infected by programs attached to emails. These emails claimed to include pictures of damages from this week's European wind storms.

Well, that motivated all the copy-cat villains, too.

Saturday I received an email with subject line "The commander of a U.S. nuclear submarine lunch the rocket by mistake". Gee, I'm sure they must have been hungry to lunch on a rocket by mistake. Of course, the person who forwarded that news story must have accidentally attached an infected executable file instead of the report on the rocket... Fortunately, NOD32 stopped the destructive payload.

ESET, makers of NOD32, have this to say on the subject:

Massive Spam Run Propagates Critical Fuclip Trojan

ESET warns of a backdoor which is being spammed across the internet. ESET Threat Labs witnessed a high saturation of the Win32/Fuclip.B Trojan in as many as 23% of email messages between 7am and 9pm Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) on January 20th. PCs infected by this trojan would become part of a botnet.

ESET NOD32 customers have been protected since early January 20th.

Today (Sunday), I received yet another -- with the same "Full Story" attachment, which NOD32 again blocked. This one was titled "Hugo Chavez dead".

I saw two similar messages that were bounced to me, which claimed to come from one of my various domains, only its subject line read "Russian missle shot down USA satellite" and another "My Heart is Thinking ". The bounces indicated that the email was bounced because it contained a forbidden attachment.

Beware of any email attachments you receive.

If you're not expecting the attachment, and if the mail claims to have come from someone you know, contact the person to make sure that they sent it to you. If you don't know the sender, don't even think about opening the attachment.

 

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
No updates last week. Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
Versions 2.0.0.1 and 1.5.0.9 were released on December 19th. These are security fixes.. Current version 2.0.0.1. Latest v1.5 version is 1.5.0.9 -- Mozilla.org urges all users to upgrade to Firefox 2.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
New version! Version 9.10 was released December 18th. This release of Opera introduces "Fraud Protection" as well as user-interface and stability changes. Read the details.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
No update this week. Version 8.1.2 was released during the week ending September 30.

US-CERT issued a press-release on November 8th that recommended that Netscape users turn off JavaScript. (Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird were subject to the same issues, but new versions were released on November 8th to solve the problem.) AOL has not updated Netscape to the new version of the underlying "Gecko" browser.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): Version 1.1 was released on January 18, 2007. What's new in SeaMonkey v1.1

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com, options: paid, sponsored or free/lite):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. This was announced as to be the last commercial version before Eudora becomes open-source in the first half of 2007.

If you're running "Sponsored Mode" in a version before 7.1.0.9, you should update now to the current version. Sponsored mode in the earlier versions will expire on March 31st.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
Thunderbird version 1.5.0.9 was released December 19th.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free):
Version 2.1 was released during the week ending December 24th.

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 32 — Sunday, January 21, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.